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I just read the second half of this thread today. Madness. The things I do when I'm bored at work.

 

I have very little to add other than its great to see everyone finally took a step back to wait for more evidence and reliable information. Most of the aguing was based on incomplete knowledge of the situation, though it seems a lot of those involved aren't willing to admit that.

 

Personally, everything I know about the case is from this thread. I can't wrap my mind around how all of the proposed facts would fit together. It just does not make sense to me.

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QUOTE (MAX @ Nov 11, 2011 -> 09:37 PM)
I just read the second half of this thread today. Madness. The things I do when I'm bored at work.

 

I have very little to add other than its great to see everyone finally took a step back to wait for more evidence and reliable information. Most of the aguing was based on incomplete knowledge of the situation, though it seems a lot of those involved aren't willing to admit that.

 

Personally, everything I know about the case is from this thread. I can't wrap my mind around how all of the proposed facts would fit together. It just does not make sense to me.

I think the news that Sandusky was still recruiting for PSU pretty much tells you everything you need to know. Unless he was just taking some crazy, rogue trips on his own, I think the fact that he was recruiting in an official capacity for PSU is the tipping point for me. But the news station breaking the story, as well as the recruit and his father, seemed so oblivious to the importance of this revelation that I am just not sure Sandusky was in an official capacity yet. We'll find out.

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QUOTE (iamshack @ Nov 11, 2011 -> 09:58 PM)
I think the news that Sandusky was still recruiting for PSU pretty much tells you everything you need to know. Unless he was just taking some crazy, rogue trips on his own, I think the fact that he was recruiting in an official capacity for PSU is the tipping point for me. But the news station breaking the story, as well as the recruit and his father, seemed so oblivious to the importance of this revelation that I am just not sure Sandusky was in an official capacity yet. We'll find out.

 

If he was carrying a letter from McQueary, it's hard not to believe that he was doing it on behalf of the university. The only way it isn't is if he went as far as fabricating the letters. But I can't see how recruitment meetings with nearly full-grown men would lead to an opportunity for him to rape. So, what point would he have for doing it? He had to have been doing it as an official representative of Penn State.

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QUOTE (iamshack @ Nov 11, 2011 -> 08:28 PM)
I know you're being sarcastic here...but if this plays out like many think it may, there is no doubt that shutting the football program down for at least the remainder of this year, removing every vestige of the staff that had anything to do with this, and starting over from scratch either next year, or perhaps even in 2013, is certainly something that would not be overreacting.

 

If you're talking about a conspiracy that goes up and down the entire staff of this program, which enabled a child molester to continue his predation both on campus at the PSU facilities, off campus with the support of PSU funding, and on behalf of PSU in an official capacity on recruiting trips, then yeah, some 9 years after it was clear this man was sodomizing boys in your facilities, this whole program should be shut down until the horror that has occurred there can be sucked out of every dark crevice and a new program can be restarted that is so f***ing clean, it makes BYU look like the SMU programs of the early 1980's.

 

Would you say the same thing if it was the Boston Red Sox?

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QUOTE (Tex @ Nov 11, 2011 -> 08:01 PM)
Just reacting to the suggestion that PSU football be shut down for a long time. I think it is a great suggestion. Close the stadium, send the players out to find other universities, or better yet pay for their own degrees. There really isn't any value to the university at large in having a football program. Best part is once the revenue from the football program is gone, they can finally drop all those non revenue producing sports like baseball, tennis, fencing, and anything that has to do with women. Turn the facilities into something the student body can really use.

Plenty of schools do just fine without a football program. I'd imagine most of Penn State's players received scholarship offers from other schools. I suppose you probably are against jailing or firing any criminal who has to support a family considering the potential trickle down effect. Penn State football---Too Big To Fail.

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QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Nov 12, 2011 -> 05:51 AM)
Plenty of schools do just fine without a football program. I'd imagine most of Penn State's players received scholarship offers from other schools. I suppose you probably are against jailing or firing any criminal who has to support a family considering the potential trickle down effect. Penn State football---Too Big To Fail.

 

Sure schools do manage without football programs. But this one has built an organization built by the tens of millions of dollars that flows in. So we are talking about hundreds of innocent people losing their jobs and non revenue sports being dropped. Perhaps there is a limit to how many people should suffer because of this. And I won't even respond to the veiled insult Dick.

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CNNSI

 

The public reaction to the Penn State scandal deservedly shows outrage for the heinous nature of the crimes allegedly committed by Jerry Sandusky and the shockingly ineffectual, perplexing and contradictory responses alleged of Joe Paterno and Mike McQueary, among others, in connection to the case. As I discussed on Wednesday, Paterno and McQueary both face the possibility of criminal charges and civil liability if they covered up criminal activity or knowingly lied to the grand jury. Former Penn State athletic director Tim Curley and former senior vice president of business and finance Gary Schultz have already been charged with crimes, and Penn State as an institution is highly vulnerable to civil lawsuits brought by Sandusky's alleged victims.

 

It should be acknowledged that the public reaction, and accompanying commentaries, are largely based on a grand jury's findings of fact, also known as a grand jury presentment. What exactly is this document, and does it paint a complete, verified picture of what transpired?

 

The grand jury's findings of fact represent how 23 men and women, who were convened by the Pennsylvania government to investigate potential criminal wrongdoing of Sandusky and those who purportedly enabled him, ultimately viewed the evidence and sworn testimony presented to them. In developing their findings of fact, the grand jurors were not tasked with deciding, beyond a reasonable doubt, that someone had committed a crime. Instead their duty was to investigate and simply determine if enough evidence existed for prosecutors to charge someone with a crime.

 

A grand jury proceeding is completely unlike a trial you see on television. You won't, in fact, be able to see a grand jury proceeding on television, or even read media accounts of what takes place. The proceeding is conducted entirely in secret. There is no public mention of anything related to the proceeding, including the proceeding's very existence. Grand jurors and prosecutors swear to secrecy; only persons subpoenaed to testify can reveal that they testified.

 

Grand jury proceedings are also different from trials in that they are unabashedly one-sided. They are run by prosecutors, who select which evidence to present and which witnesses to call to testify. Grand juries themselves can subpoena documents, but persons who may face criminal charges because of the proceedings have no right to challenge the implicating evidence, to offer exonerating evidence or to confront those who implicate them. Their attorneys are also barred from participating, though in Pennsylvania -- unlike in federal grand juries -- witnesses can bring attorneys to the proceeding and obtain advice from them.

 

Statements made by grand jury witnesses should be believed, because knowingly lying under oath to a grand jury constitutes perjury. But unlike in a trial, where lawyers for both sides can question witnesses, witnesses in grand jury proceedings are only able to answer questions asked by prosecutors. Choice of questions obviously impacts the kind of information, and depth of information, available for a factual record.

 

What does this mean? The findings of fact that we have all read and rightfully found repulsive offer a narrative that does not tell a complete story. That is especially true of the purported enablers of Sandusky, as they were not targets of the proceedings. Among the benefits of a trial is that from that forum we learn new facts and discover that certain assumptions are incorrect.

 

None of this is to say the popular view of Paterno will improve if Sandusky, or others implicated by the scandal, go to trial. In fact, a trial may raise new facts that cause us to view Paterno in a worse light, especially if he knew, or had reason to know, prior to the 2002 incident that Sandusky was a child predator. Along those lines, the circumstances of Sandusky's retirement as a successful 55-year-old coach in 1999 are clearly suspicious. The same is true of the baffling decision to allow Sandusky to remain affiliated with the school as a professor emeritus (with access to the football's team facilities, among other resources) until as late as last week. Sandusky somehow remained a part of the Penn State family despite repeated allegations that he committed sexual abuse on campus.

 

A trial, however, could clarify a number of excerpts from the statement of facts that have attracted a great deal of attention over the past week. Foremost, we may learn what McQueary actually told Paterno, whose grotesquely opaque description of a boy being raped in a shower as "something of a sexual nature" suggests that Paterno either did not know all of the details or intentionally withheld them. There is a big difference -- legally and morally -- between not knowing and not sharing.

 

A trial could also allow Paterno to answer questions from his attorney under direct examination (unless he pleads the Fifth Amendment to avoid self-incrimination and thus refuses to testify). Under direct, Paterno could explain himself in ways that he was probably unable to in the grand jury proceeding, where his lawyer could not ask him questions. Paterno may volunteer additional details that were not relevant to the questions asked of him during the grand jury proceedings, but that are nonetheless meaningful for understanding his questionable choices. For example, he could describe in detail what he reported and what efforts, if any, he made to follow up.

 

We still have much to learn about what happened at Penn State and the relationship between the school, its officials and Sandusky. Sadly, the story will probably only get much worse as the legal process develops. But we may learn new pieces of information that reshape how we assign blame and how we reconcile what appears to be immoral, almost inhuman decision-making by those we thought to be worthy of our respect and admiration.

 

Michael McCann is a sports law professor and Sports Law Institute director at Vermont Law School and the distinguished visiting Hall of Fame Professor of Law at Mississippi College School of Law. He also serves as NBA TV's On-Air Legal Analyst. Follow him on Twitter.

 

 

 

Read more: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2011/writ...l#ixzz1dUZWcj00

 

Thought this was worth reading, as it's illustrative of some of the points Badger has been making.

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Ask yourself why a university wants a division 1 football program. Is it just to allow the program to help itself and not anything else at the university? The D1 program enhances the curb appeal of the university. It enhances its prestige. When Dr. Barry Marshall accepted a position at Penn State, do you think people opened up their checkbooks and made a donation? Did thousands of students dream of one day attending Penn State? Did Marshall appear on TV every Saturday around the state in a three hour recruiting infomercial? When you build a case that the university should drop the football program, you are negating all the good an athletic program is for a university at large and agreeing with those that believe they serve no purpose except to themselves. If that is the case, then every university should drop athletics and focus solely on their academic mission. They gain nothing from an athletic program and risk losing. Why bother?

 

To punish a music student or math major because of the failings of a few people, who are being punished, and who would not be punished any further by the closing of the program, a closing that would not help any of the victims, and extends the list of innocent victims is wrong.

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QUOTE (iamshack @ Nov 12, 2011 -> 06:05 AM)
Sometimes life just isn't fair, Tex.

 

If this kind of thing was really being allowed to happen for the last 13 years with everyone's knowledge, it's a sacrifice the innocent are going to have to make.

 

How many knew? Five? Five Hundred? Five Thousand? How many are you going to hurt and how many will be helped? Hurting thousands of innocent people without helping anyone isn't the solution.

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QUOTE (Tex @ Nov 12, 2011 -> 07:18 AM)
Ask yourself why a university wants a division 1 football program. Is it just to allow the program to help itself and not anything else at the university? The D1 program enhances the curb appeal of the university. It enhances its prestige. When Dr. Barry Marshall accepted a position at Penn State, do you think people opened up their checkbooks and made a donation? Did thousands of students dream of one day attending Penn State? Did Marshall appear on TV every Saturday around the state in a three hour recruiting infomercial? When you build a case that the university should drop the football program, you are negating all the good an athletic program is for a university at large and agreeing with those that believe they serve no purpose except to themselves. If that is the case, then every university should drop athletics and focus solely on their academic mission. They gain nothing from an athletic program and risk losing. Why bother?

 

To punish a music student or math major because of the failings of a few people, who are being punished, and who would not be punished any further by the closing of the program, a closing that would not help any of the victims, and extends the list of innocent victims is wrong.

Come on, Tex.

I'm not saying kill the program for good.

 

But this thing is a mess. I'm saying IF it turns out that this has been some massive conspiracy where a pedophile has been allowed to use the football program as a vehicle to molest children, with the knowledge of the coaching staff, the AD, the President, etc., then the program needs to be shut down indefinitely, until it can be absolutely assured that everyone that had any knowledge or involvement with this has been weeded out and discarded.

 

I don't care if every other sport at the University has to shut down for a year.

 

No sporting event, no team, no athlete, no fan, no revenue stream is worth risking that anything like this can ever happen again at Penn State University or any other university, for that matter.

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QUOTE (LittleHurt05 @ Nov 12, 2011 -> 11:03 AM)
Moment of silence for victims of child abuse before the game.

 

If PSU wins, supposedly the players will match to JoePa's house with the game ball.

That would basically ruin all the class that was shown today before the game.

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QUOTE (iamshack @ Nov 12, 2011 -> 06:05 AM)
Sometimes life just isn't fair, Tex.

 

If this kind of thing was really being allowed to happen for the last 13 years with everyone's knowledge, it's a sacrifice the innocent are going to have to make.

 

It's just that simple. And I'm not being sarcastic.

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QUOTE (Tex @ Nov 12, 2011 -> 06:18 AM)
Ask yourself why a university wants a division 1 football program. Is it just to allow the program to help itself and not anything else at the university? The D1 program enhances the curb appeal of the university. It enhances its prestige. When Dr. Barry Marshall accepted a position at Penn State, do you think people opened up their checkbooks and made a donation? Did thousands of students dream of one day attending Penn State? Did Marshall appear on TV every Saturday around the state in a three hour recruiting infomercial? When you build a case that the university should drop the football program, you are negating all the good an athletic program is for a university at large and agreeing with those that believe they serve no purpose except to themselves. If that is the case, then every university should drop athletics and focus solely on their academic mission. They gain nothing from an athletic program and risk losing. Why bother?

 

To punish a music student or math major because of the failings of a few people, who are being punished, and who would not be punished any further by the closing of the program, a closing that would not help any of the victims, and extends the list of innocent victims is wrong.

 

We fully understand what a top-tier football program brings to a school. We simply understand that it's tough s*** if a large contingent of that program was aware of the sexual abuse.

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QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Nov 11, 2011 -> 06:49 PM)
You are right. McQueary should have done that but he didn't. Then Paterno should have done it for McQueary and supported McQueary, but he did the minimum. He passes it on and its covered up. Penn State Football was the most important thing to these people. Not right or wrong, not children's safety and future quality of life. If the Big Ten had any balls they would expel Penn State from their conference. If the NCAA had any balls, they would find a way to ban Penn State football for a long time.

QFT

 

f***in Paterno and all those who covered up the sick perv's dispicable crimes should go to jail and ban Penn State, the very least they can do...

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